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We introduce ConfPO, a method for preference learning in Large Language Models (LLMs) that identifies and optimizes preference-critical tokens based solely on the training policy's confidence, without requiring any auxiliary models or…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-13 Hee Suk Yoon , Eunseop Yoon , Mark Hasegawa-Johnson , Sungwoong Kim , Chang D. Yoo

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) aligns Large Language Models with human preferences without the need for a separate reward model. However, DPO treats all tokens in responses equally, neglecting the differing importance of individual…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Chengyu Huang , Zhuohang Li , Sheng-Yen Chou , Claire Cardie

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) on human preferences, typically through reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), has proven successful in enhancing their capabilities. However, ensuring the safety of LLMs during…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-09 Wenxuan Zhang , Philip H. S. Torr , Mohamed Elhoseiny , Adel Bibi

Despite notable advancements in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), most state-of-the-art models have not undergone thorough alignment with human preferences. This gap exists because current alignment research has primarily achieved…

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), using algorithms like Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), aligns Large Language Models (LLMs) with human values but is costly and unstable. Alternatives have been proposed to replace PPO or…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Liang Zhu , Feiteng Fang , Yuelin Bai , Longze Chen , Zhexiang Zhang , Minghuan Tan , Min Yang

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is a widely used reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) method across various domains. Recent research has increasingly focused on the role of token importance in improving DPO effectiveness.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Jian Li , Shenglin Yin , Yujia Zhang , Alan Zhao , Xi Chen , Xiaohui Zhou , Pengfei Xu

As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in real-world applications, balancing helpfulness and safety has become a central challenge. A natural approach is to incorporate safety constraints into Reinforcement Learning from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Geon-Hyeong Kim , Yu Jin Kim , Byoungjip Kim , Honglak Lee , Kyunghoon Bae , Youngsoo Jang , Moontae Lee

Preference-based feedback is important for many applications in machine learning where evaluation of a reward function is not feasible. Notable recent examples arise in preference alignment for large language models, including in…

Preference learning is a key technology for aligning language models with human values. Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a model-based algorithm to optimize preference learning, which first fits a reward model for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-26 Zaifan Jiang , Xing Huang , Chao Wei

Self-evaluation, a model's ability to assess the correctness of its own output, is crucial for Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) to achieve self-improvement in multi-turn conversations, yet largely absent in foundation models. Recent work has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-14 Wenkai Wang , Hongcan Guo , Zheqi Lv , Shengyu Zhang

While Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) effectively aligns pretrained Large Language and Vision-Language Models (LLMs, and VLMs) with human preferences, its computational cost and complexity hamper its wider adoption. To…

Offline preference optimization offers a simpler and more stable alternative to RLHF for aligning language models. However, their effectiveness is critically dependent on ranking accuracy, a metric where further gains are highly impactful.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Ruibo Deng , Duanyu Feng , Wenqiang Lei

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with diverse human preferences requires pluralistic alignment, where a single model must respect the values of multiple distinct groups simultaneously. In federated reinforcement learning from human…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Mahmoud Srewa , Tianyu Zhao , Salma Elmalaki

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a popular alternative to Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), offering theoretical equivalence with simpler implementation. We prove this equivalence is conditional rather…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Zhiqin Yang , Yonggang Zhang , Wei Xue , Dong Fang , Bo Han , Yike Guo

Adapting large language models (LLMs) for specific tasks usually involves fine-tuning through reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) on preference data. While these data often come from diverse labelers' groups (e.g., different…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-05-31 Shyam Sundhar Ramesh , Yifan Hu , Iason Chaimalas , Viraj Mehta , Pier Giuseppe Sessa , Haitham Bou Ammar , Ilija Bogunovic

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and derivative techniques like Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) are task-alignment algorithms used to repurpose general, foundational models for specific tasks. We show that applying…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Kaden Uhlig , Joern Wuebker , Raphael Reinauer , John DeNero

Reinforcement Learning frameworks, particularly those utilizing human annotations, have become an increasingly popular method for preference fine-tuning, where the outputs of a language model are tuned to match a certain set of behavioral…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Archie Chaudhury

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has become a cornerstone of the training and alignment pipeline for large language models (LLMs). Recent advances, such as direct preference optimization (DPO), have simplified the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-03-31 Syrine Belakaria , Joshua Kazdan , Charles Marx , Chris Cundy , Willie Neiswanger , Sanmi Koyejo , Barbara E. Engelhardt , Stefano Ermon

Reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) has become the dominant method to align large models to user preferences. Unlike fine-tuning, for which there are many studies regarding training data memorization, it is not clear how…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Aneesh Pappu , Billy Porter , Ilia Shumailov , Jamie Hayes

Reward inference (learning a reward model from human preferences) is a critical intermediate step in the Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) pipeline for fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs). In practice, RLHF faces…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Qining Zhang , Lei Ying